Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Monday May 2, read Chapter 10 of Purcell. Usually, I absolutely don’t want you to focus
on formulas, and I don’t mind if Purcell makes you think about what the relevant formulas are
rather than highlighting them for easy use. But in this chapter, I think that he has overdone it a bit,
and I thought it might be useful if I collected some of the relations that you should be looking to
understand in this chapter. Here they are: The polarization density P~ satisfies
bound = r
~ P~ (1)
Q&A questions to be answered on the Physics 15b website before 11pm on Monday, May
2:
12QA-1. In problem 10.14 in Purcell, what are the capacitances of the middle and lower capac-
itors in the figure, respectively?
+1
A : 2(1 + ) C0 and C
2 0
2 +1
B: C0 and C
1+ 2 0
C : 2(1 + ) C0 and C
2(1 + ) 0
2
D: C0 and C
1+ 2(1 + ) 0
E : None of the above pairs.
12QA-2. A conducting sphere with radius r1 carries a charge Q, It sits inside a spherical shell
of dielectric matrial with dielectric constant , inner radius r2 and outer radius r3 , as shown in the
1
illustration. What is the total quantity of bound charge on the inner surface of the dielectric shell?
A: ( 1) Q
1
B: Q
4
1
C: Q
1
D: Q
4
E : None of the above.
..............................................................................
...... ................. ..........
.... . .... .......
.......
........ ......
. ... ......
...... .....
... ....
.... .. ........................................................
.. ....
.. ...... .
... ......... ....
.....
.
. ... . .... . . ....
.... .......... ...
.. .. ..
. .... .
. ...
... .... ...
.. .. .. ..... ...
... ... .. ........................................
...
... ...
.. .. ..... .. ... .. ...
... . ..... .
... ...
... ... ... ..... ... ...
.. .. .... ... ... ...
.. .. .. ... ... ...
... ... ..
.... .... .... r1 ... r2 ... r3 ....
... ... ... . . .
... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ...
... ... .... . .. ..
... ... ..... conductor ....... .. .
... ....... . .
...
... ... ........................................... . .. ...
... ..... .. .
... ... .
...
....
..... ...... ...
... ...... ... .
.... ....... vacuum ... ........ .....
........ . .
.... ............... ....... ...
....
..... .................................................... .....
..... ...
...... .... . ....
...... ..... .
....... ......
........ dielectric . .... .
........... ..
................. ...........
....................................................................
2
Problems due at the beginning of class on Thursday, May 5 —
12.1. Consider a cube with side a centered at the origin with its edges oriented parallel to the
coordinate axes. Suppose that the three faces with x = a=2, y = a=2 and z = a=2 respectively
carry a uniform surface charge density while the other three faces carry a uniform surface charge
density .
12.1.b. If a charge Q sits at (b; 0; 0) for b a, find the force and torque on the cube.
12.4.. Consider a parallel plate capacitor with plate separation s and area A, filled with dielectric
with a small susceptibility, e 1. Because e is small, the (average) electric field inside the
capacitor can be computed directly in a simple iterative procedure. Orient the plates perpendicular
to the z axis and call the charge on the top and bottom plates plates Q.
12.4.a. ~ 0 the electric field that would exist between the plates if there there were no
Call E
dielectric. Show that (this is review!!!)
4Q
E~ 0 = z^ (12-4.1)
A
~ 0 produces a polarization in the dielectric
Now the electric field E
4e Q
P~1 = e E~ 0 = z^ (12-4.2)
A
3
This in turn produces bound charges on surfaces of the dielectric next to the plates. Find them,
and then compute the contribution E ~ 1 of these charges to the field between the plates. Now iterate!
~ 1 produces a polarization P~2 which produces charges that cause a field E~ 3 that produces
The field E
a polarization P~3 .... and so on. Find E~ n for arbitrary n.
12.4.b. Now solve the problem exactly for E ~ as a function of e and show that the E~ n you
~ around e = 0, so that
calculated in part a is the (n + 1)st term in the Taylor expansion of E
X 1
E~ (e ) = E~ n (12-4.3)
n=0